The Economic and Political History Podcast

What if the history of ancient Rome's greatest rival had been written almost entirely by the civilization that destroyed it?
In this episode of the Economic and Political History Podcast, I speak with Eve MacDonald, Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Cardiff University, archaeologist, and author of Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire (Ebury Press, 2025).
Carthage was one of the ancient world's great powers. For centuries, this North African city dominated western Mediterranean trade, built an extensive maritime empire, and challenged Rome for control of the ancient world. Yet its history has largely been told through the accounts of its enemies.
Drawing on archaeology, inscriptions, scientific discoveries, and ancient texts, MacDonald reconstructs the history of this remarkable civilization and challenges many of the assumptions through which we have traditionally understood it.
We discuss:
Recovering a lost civilization: How can historians reconstruct the history of a society whose own written voice has largely disappeared?

Dido and the origins of Carthage: What lies behind the legendary foundation of the city?

Religion and the Tophet: What does archaeology tell us about Carthaginian religious practices and the controversy surrounding child sacrifice?

The Carthaginian republic: How was Carthage governed, and why has its political system received so little attention?

An African empire: What changes when we put North Africa, rather than the Mediterranean, at the center of Carthaginian history?

Carthage as an imperial power: What does the Truceless War reveal about the relationship between Carthage and its African subjects?

The vulnerability of Carthage: What did Agathocles' failed invasion reveal about the city's weaknesses?

Hannibal and historical memory: How did Hannibal construct his own mythology, and how has his extraordinary reputation shaped our understanding of Carthage?

Why Rome destroyed Carthage: Was its destruction driven by military necessity, imperial ambition, or the desire to eliminate a commercial rival?

The survival of Punic civilization: What remained of Carthaginian culture after the destruction of the city in 146 BCE?

We also discuss how Carthage challenges the conventional boundaries of ancient history and why recovering its story matters for understanding the rise of Rome and the ancient Mediterranean.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Eve MacDonald is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Cardiff University. She is an archaeologist and ancient historian whose research focuses on Carthage, North Africa, and the ancient Mediterranean. She is also the author of Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (Yale University Press, 2015).
BOOK DISCUSSED
Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire — Eve MacDonald

ABOUT THE PODCAST
The Economic and Political History Podcast explores the historical roots of economic and political institutions, the development of societies, and the ideas that have shaped the modern world. Through conversations with historians, economists, and social scientists, we examine how history can help us understand the world we live in.
Hosted by Javier Mejia, Stanford University.
If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a comment, and share the episode with someone interested in history.
#Carthage #AncientHistory #RomanEmpire #Hannibal #EconomicHistory
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/JavierMejiaCInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/javier_mejia_c/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-mejia-cubillos-64504562/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3WqEZXavqg3qstoLKwtllF?si=589f4216d414448fApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-economic-and-political-history-podcast/id1708348817

Did World War II really transform the United States into a more productive economy?
In this episode of the Economic and Political History Podcast, I speak with Alexander J. Field, the Michel and Mary Orradre Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University and author of The Economic Consequences of U.S. Mobilization for the Second World War, published by Yale University Press.
The conventional story is familiar: World War II mobilized American industry, generated extraordinary increases in production, created new technologies, and laid the foundations for the postwar economic boom.
Alexander Field challenges an important part of that story.
His research finds that U.S. manufacturing productivity actually declined during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, total factor productivity fell substantially, and the evidence suggests that much of the celebrated wartime learning did not translate into lasting increases in productive capacity after the war.
Why?
One answer is surprisingly simple: the American economy was suddenly forced to produce things it had very little experience producing. Factories shifted from familiar civilian products to aircraft, tanks, ships, weapons, and other military goods. The transition itself was enormously disruptive.
We discuss the difference between production and productivity, why the distinction matters, and why the fact that the U.S. still had substantial unused economic capacity in 1941 changes how we should understand wartime mobilization.
We also explore some extraordinary episodes from the war economy:
• The productivity boom of the 1930s—and why the Depression decade may have been one of America's most technologically progressive periods
• Ford's transition from the Model T to the Model A as an analogy for wartime production
• The catastrophic loss of natural rubber after the fall of Singapore
• The enormous U.S. synthetic rubber program—and the political fight over alcohol versus petroleum as its feedstock
• German U-boats and the disruption of the Gulf-to-East-Coast petroleum supply chain
• The Big Inch and Little Big Inch pipelines
• Why some sectors that were starved of labor and capital nevertheless became more productive
• “Learning by doing without”
• Military logistics and the origins of linear programming
• Kantorovich, Koopmans, and George Dantzig
• Why the conventional “production miracle” narrative has proved so durable
• Wartime business advertising and the changing claims managers made about productivity
• What the history of World War II can teach us about economic history itself
Field's book is ultimately a challenge to a very familiar idea: that war mobilization necessarily strengthens an economy's long-run productive capacity.
The question is not whether American production during World War II was extraordinary—it unquestionably was. The question is what that extraordinary production actually did to productivity and long-run economic potential.
The Economic and Political History Podcast explores the intersection of economics, politics, institutions, and history. I’m Javier Mejia, a lecturer in political science at Stanford University.
If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe to the podcast, leave a comment, and share the episode with someone interested in economic history, World War II, productivity, or the history of American capitalism.
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Why do some societies experience extraordinary periods of prosperity, creativity, and human flourishing—and why do those golden ages eventually come to an end?In this episode of the Economic and Political History Podcast, Javier Mejia speaks with Johan Norberg, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages.Norberg examines seven historical golden ages and asks what they have in common. The conversation moves from the ancient Mediterranean to Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, the Italian and Dutch republics, and Britain’s Industrial Revolution.Along the way, we discuss a central puzzle of history: why do societies that become prosperous through innovation, openness, experimentation, and economic freedom so often develop institutions and political attitudes that eventually undermine those very conditions?We discuss:• What exactly makes a historical period a “golden age”—and golden for whom?• The “Great Status Quo Filter” and why successful elites can become hostile to the innovations that made them successful• Athens, Sparta, and Rome• The intellectual and economic achievements of the Abbasid Golden Age—and its decline• Song China and its remarkable approach to technology, commerce, property rights, and urbanization• Why the Ming dynasty reversed many of those developments• Why golden ages repeatedly emerged in fragmented Europe• The Italian and Dutch republics and why they eventually lost their leadership• Britain’s Industrial Revolution and the importance of “savants and fabricants”—thinkers and tinkerers• Whether Britain’s empire and colonialism caused its rise, or whether British power was itself a consequence of economic development• The role of slavery, empire, coercion, trade, and innovation in the history of modern wealth• The warning signs that may indicate the end of our own golden age• Whether the golden age of global liberalism has already come to an endNorberg's book asks us to look at history not simply as a succession of technological breakthroughs or political regimes, but as a recurring struggle between the forces that encourage experimentation and those that seek to preserve the status quo.The final question is perhaps the most consequential: if historians look back at our own era two centuries from now, what will they identify as the moment when we chose the “Spartan path”?Johan Norberg is the author of Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages.Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/JavierMejiaCInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/javier_mejia_c/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-mejia-cubillos-64504562/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3WqEZXavqg3qstoLKwtllF?si=589f4216d414448fApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-economic-and-political-history-podcast/id1708348817

Why do some currencies become global—and why do they eventually disappear?In this episode of the Economic & Political History Podcast, Stanford political scientist Javier Mejia speaks with renowned economic historian Barry Eichengreen about more than 2,500 years of monetary history.From the first coins of Ancient Lydia and Classical Athens to the Spanish dollar, the Dutch guilder, the British pound, the U.S. dollar, China's renminbi, cryptocurrencies, and central bank digital currencies, this conversation explores the forces that determine which currencies become global.They discuss:• Why international currencies almost always emerge from politically stable states• The surprising history of Ancient Greece, Byzantium, Florence, Amsterdam, and London• Why the dollar has remained dominant despite repeated predictions of its decline• Whether China can challenge the dollar• Bitcoin, stablecoins, CBDCs, and the future of money• What history teaches us about the next international monetary orderBarry Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Distinguished Professor of Economics and Political Science at UC Berkeley and one of the world's leading historians of international finance.If you enjoy long-form conversations about economics, political economy, history, and public policy, subscribe for future episodes.Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/JavierMejiaCInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/javier_mejia_c/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-mejia-cubillos-64504562/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3WqEZXavqg3qstoLKwtllF?si=589f4216d414448fApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-economic-and-political-history-podcast/id1708348817

How did one of history's greatest moral crimes come to be seen as legitimate?
In this episode, I speak with historian John Samuel Harpham about his remarkable new book The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery. Rather than focusing on plantations or nineteenth-century defenses of slavery, Harpham takes us back to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England to uncover the ideas that made slavery thinkable long before it became central to the American economy.
We discuss:
• Why an intellectual history of slavery matters
• Roman law and the rejection of Aristotle's theory of natural slavery
• The paradox of English liberty and the rise of the slave trade
• How seventeenth-century English writers viewed Africa
• Whether racism preceded slavery—or developed alongside it
• What this history tells us about moral blind spots in every society
Whether you're interested in American history, political thought, intellectual history, or the history of ideas, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on one of the defining institutions of the modern world.
John Samuel Harpham is the author of The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World.
If you enjoy conversations on history, economics, political theory, and the history of ideas, consider subscribing to the channel.

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Javier Mejia is a Stanford University lecturer who specializes in the intersection of social networks and economic history. His research interests also include entrepreneurship and political economy, with a particular focus on Latin America and the Middle East. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Los Andes University. Mejia has previously been a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at New York University-Abu Dhabi and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Bordeaux. He is also a frequent contributor to various news outlets, currently serving as an op-ed columnist for Forbes Magazine.
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/JavierMejiaC
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